Proof
by Virodeil
Summary: *Caught Is Caught Is Cuddled Series* – Loki flees before Frigga can offer Gungnir to him. He needs answers, and by the Norns he is going to get them, one way or another, without taking on the burden of an unwanted throne in the process.


Proof  
By Rey

**Loki flees before Frigga can offer Gungnir to him. He needs **_**answers**_**, and by the Norns he is going to get them, one way or another, **_**without**_** taking on the burden of an unwanted throne in the process.**

Story tags: Sleepy Cuddles, Mama Laufey, Non-sexual Post-Infancy Breastfeeding

Started on: 21st January 2019 at 09:21 PM

Finished on: 9th October 2019 at 08:03 PM

1.

Slipping into the weapons' vault once more after his disastrous talk with Father… no, _Odin_… is child's play. Loki has no idea why it has not been raided – or at least broken into – all this time.

Except for now, that is, by the ergi sorcerer prince himself.

The ergi sorcerer _j__ö__tun_ prince playing as Asgardian all his life.

His upper lip twists hatefully; more, as his eyes land again on the Casket of Ancient Winters on its lonesome pedestal.

The weapon of the ice monsters.

His birthright… maybe.

He rests his hand – the hand that an ice monster touched, in that Norns-forsaken realm, in that stupid fight – on the artefact, again, and watches as blue once more spreads, overtaking the palid tone of his skin, the skin that he has grown up believing as _his_.

It is disconcerting, in a way, that he feels no difference in his inner workings, perceptions and sensations. The blue skin even feels the same as the white one, despite the markings, and the markings themselves feel more like discoloured skin than anything else.

And of course, he is not any taller than before.

A runt, indeed.

Something caught between a laugh and a sob crowds his throat, clogging it up, and his breath stutters in his chest.

His birthright….

No, the Casket of Ancient Winters is _not_ his birthright, and neither the throne of Jötunheim.

No. There is no such luxury for a runt, he would wager. Odin concealed things, even as he spoke some truths, but being abandoned for being a runt in a race of war-mongering giants makes all too much sense for a lie.

Does it not?

He snarls, and imagines himself looking as monstrous as the jötnar he saw in his misadventure with Thor barely a candlemark ago.

What an eventful, fateful hour….

And he is going to add to the tally, _right now_.

He wants – _needs_ – answers; and by any way possible, he shall get them.

Even if he should be labelled a traitor to Asgard by the one he called father all his life.

He is a jötun, anyway. He belongs to Asgard's chief enemy, and he is even the son of its _king_.

If any race as brutish as the frost giants could have anything as civilised as a _kingdom_, that is.

2.

The crack he used to smuggle the jötnar into Asgard is still there, unsealed at this side and most likely likewise at the other side. The unseen portal, tucked in the narrow space between the palace's back wall and the stairs leading down to the vault and other storerooms, pulses subtly with wild power.

Loki fancies chill emanating from that tear of reality.

The chill is definitely there, when he steps through the portal.

The ice-layered corridor is deserted, just like before. There is a certain tension in the air, however: a sharp turmoil that bestirs the admitedly fresh, chilly air. It raises his hackles, but at the same time propels his streak of recklessness into a new height.

Wearing no disguise whatsoever, he slips through the halls that he took once before, that he knows will end up in some kind of gathering place sooner or later. One of those frost giants must be able to direct him to Laufey. He just has to survive till then, and figure out how to show Laufey his jötun skin, _plus_ how to word his questions so that he is going to get the truthful, full, straight answers.

He may like to tangle other people in retorics and other kinds of word play, but he has just found how unpleasant it is to be the butt of such game, himself.

Before he can turn down the next corridor, however, with no warning at all from his ever-present parameter spell, a handful of figures ambush him, roaring with bloodlust, black claws extended.

Gasping, he ducks beneath the sharp appendages, nearly to the ground, and hastily activates his stealth ward while doing so.

He may be feeling reckless, but not quite suicidal.

Not _yet_, at any rate.

Seven more ambushers, previously invisible to naked eye, light up in contrastive shadows when he flares a burst of seidr for tens of paces around. Oddly enough, despite the harmless – albeit somewhat distracting, otherwise intimidating – nature of the simple, crude use of power, the jötnar freeze for a moment.

A crucial moment, which he utilises to its best effect, by dashing on silent feet in between two of his would-be ambushers towards the corridor he has been aiming at. He does not stop running even when he is well clear of them, and now augments his stealth ward with a crude but less noticeable array of detection spells.

He only stops when, all too slow for his liking, he realises that _he is going nowhere_.

The ice-layered corridors look similar one to another, and their deserted state only helps to obscure their features; but still, they should not be _this_ similar one to another, should they?

With his heart thumping wildly, he raises his hands, drawing runes all round him and chanting cantrips for ward and spell analysis under his breath with feverish speed and intensity.

He is only half finished with trying to deduce the possible existence of a maze ward when, out of nowhere, the mirthless laughter of a deep, gravelly voice reverberates in the tense air, icy in both senses of the word.

His hands tremble. His words falter. And yet, he tries to go on.

_Try_ being the key. Because, before he can progress more than a couple words further into the current cantrip, something seizes the back of his coat, lifts him up high in the air, and shakes him harshly, much like a child in a tantrum with a hapless doll.

Except, _far_ more serious and _far_ more lethal.

He chokes on his words, loses the thread of his thought and seidr, and flails about most _un_decorously.

Now, desperate and panicked, he tries to attack his attacker instead.

Wrong move, apparently.

3.

Oblivion greets Loki after a _very, very solid_ hit of a blunt object on his head. And when he regains his consciousness, the said consciousness blurs out in a white-hot pain that touches not the physical dimension.

Something snaps loose, after an eternity of burning, rending agony.

He feels raw. He feels free.

He howls.

Something else – someone else? – echoes it in all-too-perfect synchronicity.

He thinks he is being wrapped in something soft and thick and comfortable, but he is still dazed from the overload of pain and the new-found freedom to really notice, or even to care.

He does care, however, when, an eternity later it seems, a thick liquid slides down his throat and pools in his stomach, only to spread rapidly throughout his belly, his chest, his head, and all over his limbs to their furthest points. It feels very much like strength and vitality crystalised into a gravy-like substance, and he grows addicted to it all too quickly.

The laughter from before – he _knows_ it, recognises it, somehow – returns. But it is softer, harsher, _thicker_, as if with mingled grief and joy that has nothing to do with mockery or satisfaction, unlike before.

And then he realises that the soft, thick, comfortable something that is wrapped round him is actually _not_ an item or even a garment, but… power – no, _self_; the escence of a person; a _very, very familiar_ person, recalled from the depths of his past and yet intimately known by his own deepest self despite the passage of time.

He pushes back against the power – tentatively, clumsily, all too aware that it can so easily crush him into total oblivion with just one simple move.

It pushes back, just as gently, and adds a… _caress_ that his most visceral sense of self definitely likes, in a… _mother-child way_?

His mind tries to categorise the motion as something to lure him into lowering his guard – _beyond_ what he has inadvertently done to himself. But….

`_Sleep, Loé. Recover. There is much time to talk, __**after**__ that. Loé is safe. __**We**__ are safe. Amma is here. Amma guards Loé._`

There must be a sliver of seiðr slipped in that odd insistance; because, almost instantly, despite his attempt to stay awake, Loki slides smoothly back into unconsciousness.

And, when he is next awake, he finds himself in a very… interesting… position.

4.

The very first thing that Loki is aware of after waking is the cocoon of power that is still wrapped tightly round him. It cradles him as much as whatever it is in the physical plane that is draped heavily across his back and the back of his knees.

And then, he becomes aware of the loud, slow, rhythmic rush-rush and dug-dug sound that fills his right ear, while his left ear catches only the comfortable silence of what _could_ be a small sleeping chamber.

But if he is in a sleeping chamber, _his_ sleeping chamber, should it not be filled with the sounds of birds singing, leaves rustling and guards' armour clanking? He does sleep on his belly except when he is injured on that area, but his bed is never…

…_Moving_?…

…Alongside the rhythmic rush-rush and dug-dug sound?…

But if his bed moves – _rises and falls_ – alongside _that sound_–!

He is lying on _a living thing_, then, not a _bed_!

With that horrible realisation in mind, Loki Odinson jerks away and struggles with a yell that sounds too much like a hoarse squeak for his liking.

Then again, _nothing_ here is to his liking. Because he has just found out that he is _unclothed_, not even in a blanket or a loose shift; and he has been lying on the bare torso of _a jötun_, judging from the somewhat bumpy texture and the silvery-streaked, dark-purple-blue hue of the skin beneath him; and he has just remembered that he has last been _captured and hurt by a jötun_.

"Let me go!" he howls, completely in a panic.

The rhythmic sound of _a sleeping jötun_ hitches, then changes, turning faster. The huge _arms_ that have been wrapped round him scramble to tighten themselves _again_ round his wriggling, struggling body.

But not before he manages to pull himself further up the chest, which makes him look into the bleary red eyes of… _Laufey_?

Oh yes, _Laufey_, certainly. He cannot ever forget the look of the monster who taunted him, taunted his fath… – no, _Odin_ – despite the dim, soft red light of the room, and….

"Huh?" the monster grumbles, sounding so sleepy, so bemused and so grumpy to be woken up so abruptly that Loki cannot help but laugh.

With more than a hint of a sob in it, because… _Laufey_! – He has lain naked and asleep _on top of Laufey_! And even now, the monster is turning ponderously to its side, still caging him close to its… _mounded chest_?… and he gets his nose shoved with clumsy _gentleness_ into the crook of its neck, just as it hums softly and rubs circles on his back.

As if a parent trying to calm down a weeping child.

And in fact, with yet another full-body jerk of shock, Loki finds that he is _indeed_ sobbing fully, no longer masking it with hysterical laughter.

Well, maybe, his body has the right of it. This situation is too much for laughter. – From enemy chief to terrifying and hurtful captor to ordinary, _cooing_ caregiver…. Laufey is…. Laufey is…. Laufey is…!

Blindly and by instinct more than anything else, he clutches at whatever surface he can find with the hand that is not pinned underneath his own body, trying to find a physical anchor to help him in this bizarre confusion.

He lets go of it just as quickly, as if scalded; with the accompaniment of a hitched scream-sob that is full of sheer mortification, even to his own ears, and also a renewed struggle that is more frantic than before.

Because, especially with gravity aiding in the definition of the shape, he has apparently just grabbed at a handful of _breast_.

A _woman's_ breast.

On _Laufey_.

Who is _King_ of Jötunheim.

Who _didn't_ show any kind of… womanly atributes… in their previous three encounters.

Who _doesn't seem to mind_ that an enemy has just… _groped_… _him_ for lack of a better word!

Who is in fact shifting, tilting lower, half pinning Loki underneath… his? _Her_?… bulk, and… _proffering the said breast to an __**Asgardian prince**_?!

Loki gapes, freezing in place.

The nipple, round and glistening with milk, slips into his open mouth.

`_Eeeeeee!_` he shrieks; mentally, because his physical mouth is full of… – `_Eeeeeeee!_`

And then, `_What an alarm bell to wake up to!_` comes a grousing voice that sounds suspiciously like… like… like… _him_!

`_He's in my head! He's in my head! What happened with my shields?_` Loki freaks out, flailing against the mental intrusion that nonetheless seems _so natural to be there_. But his body, from head to toe, is pinned together too securely for him to struggle out of this situation, and he is too mortified, too confused to mount a mental attack, and…

…`_Awwwwh! Maybe I should have named you for a cat instead! You are as vicious and yowly as a hungry kitten! But why don't you nurse if you are hungry? Instead of trying to claw the insides of my mind into pieces? Is this some retaliation for the hit on your head? I wouldn't have done it if I knew you were my child! What vile enchantments that __**thief**__ put on you!_` Laufey is being a grumpy, babbly old woman.

The cocoon of power that is still tightly wrapped round him squeezes a little, _warningly_, on that utterly bizarre thought. And, `_Amma heard that, Loé. What is wrong with being old or being a woman, anyway?_` is the even grumpier rejoinder.

`_You are mad,_` Loki blurts out, at last giving up trying to even make sense of the situation, let alone control it.

`_And you are tiny, rude one,_` Laufey huffs, before, _sneakily_, the jötun squeezes… his? Her?… own nipple a little, causing a spurt of milk to pour along Loki's tongue…

…And slide down his throat with a startled swallow when, deliberately (or so he suspects), the mad, mad jötun continues, `_If that brat had the gall to steal you for themself, they should have the same gall to defy the customs of those savages and raise __**my child**__ according to our standards. They must have nursed you in the early days, or you wouldn't have survived, but they should have __**continued**__. You would not have been this tiny, then. Now see how they'd like it if I stole that little brat of theirs and use __**him**__ as a wall-hanging __**and**__ a target practise!_`

He has a horrible, horrible suspicion on the subject – or rather, _subjects_ – of the little rant.

But there is a more urgent matter to pursue, in line with the original purpose of why he came here, why he sought out Laufey for the second time ever in his life. It even trumps being nursed like a baby by a grumpy, babbly, mad jötun who never showed any sign of being a woman before this point.

`_And if I stay 'tiny' for the rest of my life? What then? Are you going to kill me now to spare me that indignity? As 'an act of __**kindness'**__, maybe?_`

He cannot – _will not_ – name the feeling that floods his chest when, just as deliberately as before, Laufey returns his words to him: `_You are mad._`

`_I think your people will say that to you if you keep me,_` he fishes further, still. `_I'm a runt, after all. You have neither need nor use for runts._`

And Laufey says, `_**Our**__ people will most likely say that, and probably stage a __**second**__ coup on my rule, if I ever relinquish you to those savages, now that we got you back from those thieves._`

The proof is there, right before his eyes. The unvarnished truth, however unexpectedly and bizarrely it is delivered. But he can't see; he daren't see.

His chest aches. His eyes, likewise.

`_You had no breasts, let alone those laden with milk,_` he forces himself to point out, instead, to avert his own attention to something tamer, safer. `_Are you not… embarrassed? And… umm, I'm sorry for… erh, accidentally…. Well, I didn't know it was there!_`

Laufey sends him a feeling of utter bafflement, in response. `_My child needs milk to grow and catch up with their peers. So why not? And what is wrong with putting one's hand on one's food, as long as one is not toying with it or wasting it? Why should I be embarrassed of being a mother, anyway? It is the ultimate mark of adulthood with an additional gift! And I am always partial to gifts, especially gifts with additional gifts attached._`

The proof is there, right before his eyes, and he cannot look away from it, in the end.

`_Now, what did I do wrong? Aieee. Stop crying, little one? Oh Ýmir, what should I do now?_`

He cannot look away, he cannot stop crying, but maybe it doesn't matter.

Not here, at least, where the proof lies, babbling in a panic about making _her child_ cry.


End file.
